Dan's Marinations

With the memory's of last weekend's Holy Week services fresh in our minds, I'd like to take the next several marinations to reflect on atonement.  That Jesus' death atones for human sins is a fundamental part of our faith.  All of us fall short of the glory that was intended for us.  All of us stumble far too frequently.  None of us is worthy of the blessings God offers.  None of us, on our own merit can have any sort of meaningful relationship with God.  If that is the human problem, Jesus death is the solution.  It atones for our sins.  By it we are freed from the penalty of our sins, and to a certain extent are freed from the presence of sin.  The New Testament uses language such as "redemption," "propitiation," "ransom," and "sacrifice" in referring to Jesus' death.  All these loaded theological terms carry a lot of freight, and serve to convey the point that Jesus does make us right with God. If it is clear that Jesus d...

It is Good Friday as I write this.  This is perhaps the darkest, yet most triumphant day in our calendar as Christians.  It is dark, for on this day our Lord suffered public humiliation, torture, and execution for a whole lot of poor sinners like me.  It is triumphant because in a way only God can arrange, this death led to life.  The suffering was the way to victory.  As a minister of the Gospel Holy Week is the highlight of the year for me.  The procession of services from Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and finally the worship on Easter morning are the services I look forward to most.  I relish this time of the year because it is absolutely the core of our faith.  Apart from the events of this weekend the church is little more than a social organization clothed in fancy, churchy language.  Now for the confession, I have a love/hate relationship with actually preaching during this season.  Yes, I would rather preach Maundy Thursday and...

I recently was listening to a lecture by John Bell from the Iona Abbey in Scotland.  A member of the Church of Scotland, he's a popular writer and speaker on the subject of music and worship.  In this lecture, Bell described one of the problems he sees in contemporary Christianity, the tendency to seek too much from worship.  He said that in years past there were three spheres of worship.  First, there was private prayer and study.  This was the foundation of the individual's spiritual life.  Secondly, many also had specific family devotions led by the head of the household.  Thirdly, everyone went to public worship.  The contemporary problem he pointed out was that for far too many Christians there is little private spiritual life.  Private prayer and study, private spiritual disciplines, personal devotion to the means of grace, are far too uncommon.  This is a dangerous phonomenon.  Our spiritual lives are our own responsibility...

What is it with all these Christians with funny smudges of ashes on their foreheads tonight?  Why do folks who ordinarily show some degree of common sense do something as silly as get oily ashes smeared on themselves?  I'd like to muse a little bit on this whole Ash Wednesday business, and hopefully shed some light on why we do it.  In some Christian circles there is great skepticism of Ash Wednesday and Lent, or anything liturgical for that matter.  This can come from learning too well the lessons of the Reformation.  If we believe in Sola Scriptura, why bother with ashes and Lent if neither are mentioned in the Bible?  If we truly are saved by grace through faith, what's the point of it?  Sometimes we "modern" folks can get too suspicious of traditions. The short answer to these objections is quite simply that ritual acts and symbols do actually mean things.   A person can be married with or without wearing the ring, but the ring means ...

Just as my last posting was prompted by this current series of sermons, so this one will be as well.  Last Sunday I preached on the raising of Jairus' daughter.  When word came that the synagogue ruler's twelve year old daughter had died, Jesus' response was simply, "do not fear, only believe."  This Sunday I will address the hemorrhaging woman who was healed in a story sandwiched inside the overall account of Jairus' daughter.  To her Jesus said "your faith has made you well."  Numerous times in the Gospels when Jesus healed, he cited the individual's faith.  Last month I attended a large conference at which one of the presenters, a popular speaker on the topic of prayer, very passionately dealt with healing and faith.  He repeatedly encouraged us to name the specific need for which we prayed, and to claim that healing in faith.  To his credit he took an expansive view of Jesus' work on the cross.  He reminded us, correctly, that the ...

Currently in our church I am doing a series of sermons on the miracles of Jesus.  This upcoming Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011 the sermon is about an exorcism in Matthew 12:22-29.  Rather than load the sermon with background material, caveats, and hedges, I've decided to let this blog do that work.  For starters the world in which Jesus lived was very conscious of angels and demons.  Nearly everyone- Gentile or Jew- believed in supernatural powers that were at work in the world.  When Paul refers to "powers and principalities" he is referring to such powers.  It was a world in which it was widely assumed that a person could be actively controlled by an evil spirit.  In this environment there were any number of exorcists practicing their art.  Even pagan religions had specified rites and incantations to free someone from demonic possession.  There were also Jewish exorcists at work calling on the power of the true God, Yahweh .  In this environm...

Fear is one of those human emotions that we all feel at times, and which can be healthy.  Fear of deadly snakes is good, fear of big trucks going 75 mph can be healthy.  At times scripture itself says we should fear God.  All too often though, fear exerts a paralyzing grip on us, even preventing us from accomplishing the very things we say we want.  A couple of generations ago, in his first of four inaugural addresses Franklin Roosevelt said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  At that point the country had been mired in the Great Depression for a couple of years and we were three and a half years removed from the disastrous crashes of October 1929.  In this context Roosevelt spoke what amounted to brilliant words.  I've heard that FDR had a second rate intellect, but a first rate temperament.  The first rate temperament was on display in those words.  He correctly realized that as long as the nation was gripped in fear, ban...